Kate should have died twice, but fate delivered her up safe both times. The first incident occurred when she was ten – she fell out of a tree onto a metal star picket. The picket caught the edge of her waist, tore her clothing, and left a bleeding gash on her side. Kate never made a sound but sat on the ground in silent shock. It was the sudden astringent smell of the crushed rosemary bush beneath her that alerted her mother and drew her from the house. She tenderly dressed the wound.
Her father got a telling off for having left the picket under the tree and then she heard her mother’s voice drop to a whisper, ‘… only a few millimetres more and she would have been skewered.’
Her mother pulled out the shattered herb the next day and planted yellow chrysanthemum in its place instead even though she had regularly used the rosemary in her cooking. Kate asked her why she didn’t replant the rosemary; her mother replied that it was for ‘No reason.’ Kate remembered how her mother would give them a sprig of rosemary to put in their pockets when they went to funerals. Her mother had always been a superstitious person, raised on old world traditions that knew much could be divined from the natural world around them. Kate’s grandmother would say she was a good luck charm after that and kiss her forehead three times for luck whenever she saw her.
The second incident occurred when she was sixteen. She was sitting at a table outside a café with her family and they were being harried by occasional gusts of a northerly wind. Her father had already told her to just sit on her hat, but she hadn’t and leapt up once again to chase it when it was blown off her head. In that same moment, a car parking in front of the café tables had accelerated instead of reversed. It mounted the gutter and ploughed over where she had been sitting seconds before, shattering the chair she had been sitting on.
After the second incident it was clear that she truly was in the hands of fate and her mother told her that she must be here for a purpose to come. Knowing this made her feel special and relieved; she’d been given a sign that she could acquiesce her future to the unseen powers that guided the universe. She’d not been a passive person before her brushes with death.
Kate settled into being guided by the preternatural forces that determined her fate. Under the circumstances, as she understood it, it meant following her heart and not overthinking. So, she worked in what she loved – flowers – she became a florist and waited for opportunities to arise. All those bouquets for funerals and newborn babies and apologies from neglectful husbands after a time became routine and repetitive. Beautiful scents, creative energies and emotional milestones were satisfyingly poetic for a while, but nothing particularly extraordinary or remarkable came of it. She was confused when it did not lead her to winning competitions or travelling the world to arrange flowers for royalty or the famous. Though she had followed her heart it turned out she wasn’t as creative as she’d hoped, she was proficient but had no great talent.
For her twenty-first birthday her parents had given her the gift of joining an archaeological dig overseas. She wondered if it would result in her meeting an archaeologist, them falling in love and her accompanying him all around the world – but no.
She was still waiting patiently when she met Pete five years ago. It was at the races, and he’d been dressed in a new suit and was wearing feathers in his hat. Those feathers were a sign. Feathers were for prosperity, feathers were for attraction, and the spell worked on her. She was taken with his blue eyes and dimples. Someone commented that they looked like they should be a couple, her blue dress matched the blue in his tie. There was chemistry and she’d taken the chemistry to mean that they were meant to be together. He was her fate.
At the time she was still wrapped up in the idea that being in the hands of fate was a desirable thing, that it was something that was going to elevate her. She’d heard all the cliches: there’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be; if you have to try too hard then it’s not meant to happen; and things happen for a reason.
Her mother and grandmother had been good at reading the signs, and she had assumed she would be to. But recently, a bitter realisation had come to dawn on her: maybe she had read it all wrong – perhaps she had been meant to die. Maybe her future was a barren field as she hadn’t been meant to have one. Perhaps there was no allocation for her in the world, no say, no influence, no hold because she was a fugitive soul.
It hadn’t been meant to be a romantic weekend away. Originally, they were supposed to be there with friends. Their friends had cancelled at the last minute, and so now it was just her and Pete, and now the weekend seemed to have the pressure of being a romantic weekend, a couple’s weekend, maybe even a dirty weekend (who knew what Pete was thinking), a weekend of doing something together that they enjoyed doing together, and she was not prepared for that.
They climbed a long winding hill in their car to a place called Red Hill and the B&B was called The Barn because it was a barn converted into four apartments. Their friends should’ve been in one of those other apartments.
It was nestled beneath tall gums and tree ferns, and it was as pretty as the pictures on the internet had depicted. It was late in the day when they arrived and the last rays of the sun was lighting up the tips of the trees above them, but down below an ambiguous twilight had already formed. It had been the warmest day in weeks, with the last few days leading up to it, and the air had the promise of spring. When they stepped out of their car the air was filled with small white moths though. Pete swatted at them, ‘They’re really annoying,’ he exclaimed.
‘An eclipse, that’s what a group of moths are called,’ said Kate as she moved through them.
By the time she got inside, she could feel a couple of the moths caught up in her hair and fluttering to escape.
No sooner had he dropped his bag inside the door than Pete had opened a beer for himself and turned on the tv. He always did that first, turn on the tv, make sure it was working, and then within half-an-hour have complete mastery of the remote buttons.
‘It’s ok. We’ve got good reception,’ he was saying.
If Amanda was here as planned, they would have been opening their own bottle of wine to share shortly, and she wouldn’t be caring what Pete was doing.
She had expected to go for walks and browse the shops with Amanda while Pete and Raf did whatever it was they liked to do. Her and Pete wouldn’t have had to pretend to like the same things. It would have been fun, but now –.
It was lovely accommodation, and she should’ve been enjoying it. Why not – because at the moment Jupiter was retreating and she was a Pisces, and there was nothing she could do about that! It may have also been because earlier that week, a friend of hers had informed her that she was moving to Dubai; her work was taking her there, with her husband and child. That was supposed to be her. Kate wished it was – the tailwind of destiny scooting her along to somewhere out of the ordinary because that’s what was in her heart, because that’s what she’d been saved for.
When she first met Pete, he had talked of exciting things he wanted to do. He said he was toying with the idea of moving to Spain – he’d taken them to a tapas bar on their first date. She’d been afraid of losing him to Spain in the early days before they’d been together long enough for it to be assumed she would go with him. But then his talk turned to telling her that he was on the cusp of a promotion and that it would be worth his while staying put for that. He bought a new car and new suits in anticipation of his forthcoming promotion. But then the company hit hard financial times and they made his position and him redundant. He went to the races so that he had somewhere to wear his new suits.
Pete worked in tyres now and he liked his job, but it wasn’t going to take him to Dubai or Spain. They’d bought an apartment together because everyone had told them they shouldn’t wait any longer to get into the property market and the dream of going to Spain all but evaporated.
She shouldn’t be disappointed in him; he was no more ordinary than she was. She just wished they weren’t.
She wondered what the planetary phase had been when they’d met to cause her to be so very wrong about the potential of their relationship: the places they would go, the things they would achieve.
They accidentally slept in in the morning because the sunlight didn’t reach them underneath the trees until much later than they were used to. They did sleep soundly though.
‘The soccer is on this afternoon, and I want to watch it. Is that’s ok?’
She sighed. She didn’t like watching sport on TV. She had given up being interested in what he was interested in a year ago.
‘I would’ve been kite boarding with Raf this arvo anyway,’ he continued.
Kite boarding – the latest sport he’d taken up and wasted money buying equipment for. He never gave up finding new things to be average at.
‘Are we going to do anything together today?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. We can do something this morning.’
Pete already had already dripped coffee down the front of one of the white bath robes that had been provided for them.
‘Amanda and I were going to go for a walk.’
‘We can do that if you like.’
‘You don’t have to. I know walks are not your thing.’
‘That’s ok.’
‘Anyway, the morning is already half over.’
‘You’d better start getting ready then.’
She’d looked the walk up online. It took in coast banksia woodlands, cliff tops overlooking bass strait and a rocky beach.
The wind was cold, but the sun was hot, except for when it was dipping in and out of clouds – impossible to dress for. It was November, spring, and typically vicarious, which was to be expected yet always a surprise.
‘It’s this way, five kilometres. It’ll only take an hour and a quarter. Fifteen minutes per k.’
‘OK. I’ll be looking forward to chilling on the couch this arvo!’
It wasn’t an easy walk as the path was uneven, beset by loose gravel and tree roots.
‘We’ve been walking for fifty minutes now, babe, and we haven’t even reached the cliff top yet.’
‘I think it must be a really direct line from the beach back to the carpark.’
‘You sure it wasn’t five kilometres each way?’
‘Well, it said, five k walk.’
The truth was she’d been careless about the details and wasn’t really sure – it wasn’t a problem for her if the walk was longer than expected, but Pete wouldn’t be back in time now to see the start of his precious soccer match this afternoon.
They finally arrived at the cliff top lookout and there was a seat to rest on and take in the view.
‘Can I have the other water bottle, please?’ she asked.
‘I only brough one.’
‘I said to bring both.’
‘It was only supposed to be just over an hour walk. I didn’t think it was necessary to carry two bottles of water.’
‘One bottle of water is too much for you, yet you go to the effort of packing all your kiteboarding stuff and tying a board to the roof of the car.’
He looked sheepish. ‘You were in a sullen mood before I forgot the water. Have I done something wrong?’
There was a gap before she replied, ‘No.’
She wasn’t sure which one of them was responsible for her bad mood. At least some of it was because she was thirty, five years into the relationship, and was now having doubts. He was so ordinary, and she was too much of a coward to leave and make her own path. Surely, his was not the love her life was meant for.
‘I don’t know what you want from me sometimes. I came on the walk.’
‘Even though you didn’t really want to.’
‘That’s not fair. I did it for you. Is it coming up to that time of the month?’
She gave him an appalled look.
After the walk Pete settled down to watching the soccer even though he had missed nearly the entire first half. His feet were up on the coffee table, and a chip packet was in his lap.
He hadn’t even asked her what she intended to do with the rest of the afternoon.
There was a collection of books on a shelf, they were probably left behind by other guests: memoirs, self-help … romance, she picked that one. But she struggled to get into it and had to re-read pages time and again.
‘What time was our dinner reservation?’ Pete called out from the sitting room.
‘Seven. I don’t really want to go. I have a headache.’
He didn’t reply.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yeah. Why don’t you take some Panadol and see how you feel in a little while.’
‘Sure.’ But she didn’t.
A little while later, ‘How do you feel?’
‘I’ve still got a bad headache.’
‘Shame. You’re the one who really wanted to go to this restaurant.’
She’d wanted to go when it was all four of them, not just her and Pete.
‘How about I get us some takeaway.’
After he left, she took the Panadol.
The light was fading outside, and Kate thought Pete had been gone an unnecessarily long time, and she began to cry. She’d wasted the whole afternoon and had now not even gone to the restaurant she’d wanted to. She cried because she wanted to have a baby, and Pete wanted to have a baby, but she didn’t want to have one with him.
She was sitting in the dark when he finally returned.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ he called out from the kitchenette. ‘Just down the road there is a gin distillery, it’s also a restaurant, and I went in to see if I could get some takeaway meals, which I could. It took a little longer than I expected, but I tried a glass of their gin while I was waiting, and it was really good. We should go back there tomorrow.’ He walked into the dark bedroom, ‘Why don’t you turn on the light?’ He fumbled for the light switch.
When the room was illuminated, he stopped short. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘We’ve got nothing in common, do we.’
‘What do you mean? Of course, we’ve got stuff in common. Well, we’ve got enough in common. We can’t like all of the same stuff; that’s just unrealistic. What does it matter if we don’t? I don’t think it’s helpful to think about that sort of thing too much.’ He came and sat down on the bed next to her. ‘We both like Mexican food, the same tv shows, sleeping in.’
She put her head into her hands.
‘What’s wrong,’ he asked again.
‘You want to watch soccer … we never went to Spain.’
‘Spain? Where’s that come from?’
‘You were talking about living in Spain when we met.’
‘What? Was I! If you wanted to go to Spain, you should’ve said something.’
‘You’re supposed to want to go.’
‘Huh? I would if you wanted to.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘That’s crazy. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment with that one.’
‘I thought we would’ve done more with our lives by now. I’m disappointed in myself for not being more.’
He looked crest fallen, ‘I didn’t think there was anything wrong with our lives.’ He sat thoughtfully for a moment. ‘It’s because you have such high expectations of yourself, of everything. You’re a romantic, which is beautiful, but it makes it hard for you. I don’t expect everything to be perfect and I wouldn’t want someone who’s perfect, because where would that leave me? I think most of the time life is only meant to be ordinary. You could say our lives are perfectly ordinary – I’m very satisfied with that.’
She broke into tears again.
‘You’ve got to move on, Kate.’
‘From you?’ she cried.
He laughed, ‘No. From your expectations. We are exactly where we’re supposed to be …’
She looked up suddenly at those last words, there was an unexpected echo.
‘… and look, I brought you desert.’
He took a container out of a paper bag.
‘It’s lavender pudding; I saw it and thought of you because I know you love herbs and think they have special properties and all that crap. I can’t imagine how it would taste good, but they assured me it does.’
‘Lavender is calming,’ she said.
A short while later while Orb Weaver spiders were spinning their webs outside, Kate ate the lavender pudding and slowly her emotions quietened, and she fell asleep on Pete’s chest while he was laughing at the tv.